Garald Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 I got a Wifi adapter for my Mitsubishi Ecodan heat pump in the mail the other day. But what do I see at the beginning of the installation notice? Apparently I can't install myself, or I will be executed by my own heat-pump. (Note: contrary to what the note might be taken to imply, the Wi-Fi adapter is a small, light thing.) I contacted the business that sold me the heat-pump and installed it - they'd like to charge me 200 eur for installing the adapter. That's almost twice the price of the adapter. Is this normal? Do I really need an installer? Can every electrician do this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharpener Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 I would give it a go, you are unlikely to damage anything. If the rest of the installation instructions are clear and you feel capable of carrying them out I don't imagine there would be any problem. If you are going to employ an electrician to do it then at best he will have installed one before and it will be a doddle, at worst he will have no more clue that you and you will be paying for his time while he looks it up on youtube just like you could have done. The biggest issue is likely to be not the physical installation but getting it registered on your wifi network, that will depend on what security measures your router has got. How comfortable are you with working on the wifi setup? For comparison I installed a zappi wifi car charger a year ago and it was quite complicated because of the MAC access control and network extender I have got installed but I got there. If I had used an electrician I would have had to explain all this to them anyway because the standard install instructions would not have been much help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelvin Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 I have the same wifi dongle. Happy to share pictures of how mine is installed if you get stuck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted February 19 Author Share Posted February 19 15 minutes ago, sharpener said: The biggest issue is likely to be not the physical installation but getting it registered on your wifi network, that will depend on what security measures your router has got. How comfortable are you with working on the wifi setup Bah, that's unlikely to kill me, and I wouldn't be any worse at it than an electrician. Would I be voiding any sort of warranty, though? I don't know whether to take these instructions seriously, or more like "wood has been found to cause cancer by the state of California". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted February 19 Author Share Posted February 19 (edited) 1 minute ago, Kelvin said: I have the same wifi dongle. Happy to share pictures of how mine is installed if you get stuck. Great. Please do. Did you install it yourself? I take you are still alive? Edited February 19 by Garald Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharpener Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 15 minutes ago, Garald said: Would I be voiding any sort of warranty, though? Doubt it. You would have to read the terms of the warranty provided by the original installers. They might not be enforceable anyway. Unfortunately, by asking how much they would charge, you have alerted them to your plans, did they say anything at the time? Otherwise I will leave it to @Kelvin as he has first-hand experience of the process and may be can shed light on the warranty issue as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted February 19 Author Share Posted February 19 3 minutes ago, sharpener said: Doubt it. You would have to read the terms of the warranty provided by the original installers. They might not be enforceable anyway. Unfortunately, by asking how much they would charge, you have alerted them to your plans, did they say anything at the time? No, only that installing it would not be that hard (since they ( = sales representative of the company that installed my heat-pump) wanted to sell me a WiFi unit, installation not included; I ended up buying it for less online). I could explicitly ask him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary68 Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 There is an installation video online there is only 1 place it can go, turn off power to FTC, remove cover (4 screws), plug in, put cover back on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MortarThePoint Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 What does the WiFi adapter allow you to do? Can you do everything you can otherwise do at the controller? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted February 20 Author Share Posted February 20 20 minutes ago, MortarThePoint said: What does the WiFi adapter allow you to do? Can you do everything you can otherwise do at the controller? It allows you to keep track of heat flow temperature and COP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MortarThePoint Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 1 minute ago, Garald said: It allows you to keep track of heat flow temperature and COP. Can you turn the ASHP on and off, change the flow temp and reconfigure the schedule? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted February 20 Author Share Posted February 20 Just now, MortarThePoint said: Can you turn the ASHP on and off, change the flow temp and reconfigure the schedule? I meant that keeping track of heat flow temperature and COP is something you can do through the WiFi adapter but not through the controller, at least not on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to monthly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary68 Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 (edited) Just to clarify the Melcloud app doesn't calculate COP. Its shows an estimate of power consumed and heat generated on a bar chart that you can estimate COP from but its not particularly useful, as there is no data other than the bars and its an estimate. Where the app is useful is seeing what the flow and return temperatures are doing for the last 24 hours so you can see how its cycling on and off. You can use it to turn the ASHP on and off remotely and change room temperature if you are using the main controller to control temperature. You can also set a schedule for heating and hot water and change from fixed flow to weather compensation modes but you can't change the flow temperature specifically. Edited February 20 by Gary68 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilT Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 1 hour ago, Garald said: not on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to monthly. You can if you keep daily track of the month figure which is the cumulative to the most recent midnight I.e in whole day batches - includes no energy measurement for the current day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted February 20 Author Share Posted February 20 5 hours ago, PhilT said: You can if you keep daily track of the month figure which is the cumulative to the most recent midnight I.e in whole day batches - includes no energy measurement for the current day. Ah, cool - so that's them case both for electrical energy used and for heat extracted? I'd need to start keeping track on a day when heating and hot water were completely off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilT Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 3 hours ago, Garald said: Ah, cool - so that's them case both for electrical energy used and for heat extracted? Yes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted March 17 Author Share Posted March 17 Update: got the Wifi adapter installed yesterday. For some reason, when the heat-pump turned itself on during the night, the flow temperature climbed during two hours from 25C to 40C (with the return temperature being about 4C less) and then after an hour it turned itself off (unsurprisingly, since 40C is a lot for my size of radiators and the current weather). The outside temperature barely dipped from 12C to barely below 10C. Now, the way I had set up the heat curve, I was meaning for the flow temperature to be about 25C when it's 10C outside. 1. Is the heat pump taking the heat curve as a starting point, or is it just ignoring it? 2. I was keeping the thermostat in the warmest room (big, south-facing windows), where I have had to cut down the heat flow quite a lot. I take this may lead the system to underestimate how much running things at a given temperature heats the house? I imagine I should just set the Wifi controller in a more "average" room? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gary68 Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Post a screenshot of the front screen of your controller and your heat curve sounds like either the heat curve is wrong or you are running at a set temp and not weather comp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilT Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Are you in target room temp (auto adaptive) mode? If so the flow temp will not follow the WC curve directly, it will "learn" from repeated runs the point at which flow temp maintains room temp, which may take a few days. At mild ambient temps, if your heat pump is oversized it will not allow short cycling, which may explain what you are seeing - that even at minimum continuous power level the flow temp increases from 25 to 40, then the heatpump switches off for a while. Mine is doing exactly this, in approx one hour cycles (it's been 16degC today) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted March 17 Author Share Posted March 17 8 minutes ago, PhilT said: Are you in target room temp (auto adaptive) mode? If so the flow temp will not follow the WC curve directly, it will "learn" from repeated runs the point at which flow temp maintains room temp, which may take a few days. At mild ambient temps, if your heat pump is oversized it will not allow short cycling, which may explain what you are seeing - that even at minimum continuous power level the flow temp increases from 25 to 40, then the heatpump switches off for a while. Mine is doing exactly this, in approx one hour cycles (it's been 16degC today) Right, it's on auto adaptive mode - and I turned the flow on the radiators in the room it used to be in quite a lot a few days ago (before, that room was usually too warm and other rooms too cold; I knew all along that the radiators there were more oversized than elsewhere - I had done the computations). So, it might be getting a bit confused. When I moved the thermostat earlier today from one room to another, the flow temperature shot up from 35 to 55. Bad heat pump! Bad heat pump! I hope it doesn't do that again. Of course the heat pump turned itself off shortly after that - temperatures had risen. Temperatures are mild here by now (today, they oscillated around 12 or 13C). The heat-pump is a bit oversized - all installers insisted, and the model (Mitsubishi Ecodan) is supposed to be able to adapt nicely (and it seems to: the fan often, indeed mostly, operates at noticeably less than full power). At the same time that the flow temperature shot up, the tank temperature plummeted, and then shot up again - I take that's an effect rather than a cause? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilT Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 It won't be able to adapt if you move the thermostat from room to room. I leave mine always in the living room in the same position, in a place where there is no possibility of it ever being in the sun. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garald Posted March 17 Author Share Posted March 17 (edited) 4 minutes ago, PhilT said: It won't be able to adapt if you move the thermostat from room to room. I leave mine always in the living room in the same position, in a place where there is no possibility of it ever being in the sun. I think I'll just leave it where it is now - a heated corridor. The library (where it was, and where I am now) has southern exposure and gets lots of direct light. It also has (as I said) relatively oversized radiators, and it will take me a little while to get the balance just right. Edited March 17 by Garald Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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